The Invincible Iron Man ‘Demon’ Volume 9

The Mandarin and Ezekiel Stane have teamed up to destroy Tony Stark. Tony’s battle with alcoholism is exploited by Mandarin while Stane employs a legion of foes to cripple Iron Man. Can Tony overcome his battle with the bottle and with Stane and Mandarin?

There are quite a number of narrative threads running through this title and while the book jumps between them quite frequently becoming a tad confusing at times, Fraction manages to keep the suspense and drama in check. His characters are well written especially Tony’s emotional upheavals. The tension between Tony, the military and his corporate ventures is a highlight as well. The dialogue is not the smoothest at times and Hammer Industries’ involvement in the story is tenuous throughout this collection.

Larroca’s art is good, each character looks unique, the backgrounds are well rendered and his overall compositions and angles are spot on. The drawback is that it is not consistent all the way through, at times characters’ hands and faces look disproportioned and under developed. The fight sequences are the gems of the series, Iron Man’s battle with the Dreadnoughts and Living Laser serving as examples. This edition is a good read and can be enjoyed by any reader.

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His name is Tony, and he’s an alcoholic.

Iron Man saw a city turned to stone and witnessed a war among gods. And when he thought the world was ending, he got drunk. Bloodied but not beaten in the wake of Fear Itself, he’s a hero with a humble goal: to make things right, in both his business and his life. But the Mandarin and Ezekiel Stane have other plans, publicizing Tony’s struggle to stay sober while assembling a super-villain army to close in for the kill. And Sasha and Justine Hammer are continuing to tighten the screws on the only man who stands in their way on the road to worldwide technological dominance. Can Iron Man withstand this all-out assault, or will he again succumb to his demon?